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Wednesday, 30 March 2016

I'm continuing to have fun with my 3D printer, and thought that it would be an interesting exercise to produce a complete gaming force using it. Obviously I started small - a warband for Ganesha Games' Battlesworn skirmish rules; ten to twelve figures maximum would be well within the range of my capabilities.

Once again I turned to the prolific Dutchmogul and selected THIS FILEsupplemented by the Troll Ronin HERE. I rescaled some of the figures, worked out which ones would print standing up and which would need to be printed in two halves and spent a day messing about with the printer.

The end result - The Night Parade of the Yokai for Battlesworn, in roughly 25mm - compatible with the GW Lord of the Rings figures which make up most of my other warbands basically. A force of Japanese goblins and spirits, with some unusual members.

This is the troll ronin. I printed four of them, scaled down to about half size, to be the compulsory four Fighters. They represent Oni, of a sort.

Now this is an Oni! In Battlesworn he'll be a Brute/Tank, although the new supplement has a Giant category which may suit as well.

This is a Dorotabo, which appears to be the ghost of a farmer. I have classed him as Tank to represent him being difficult to kill.

This is a Tengu. They were famous for being skilled warriors, so I have classed him as a Flyer/Brute.

The Kappa - a water-monster. There are no specific water creatures in Battlesworn, but Kappa seem to fit the Rogue category very nicely. This was the most difficult figure to print, mostly because the software I use wouldn't support the arms, so they deformed during the process. It took a couple of goes to get a model I was happy with (which means I have a small collection of deformed Kappa waiting to be used or something).

This bizarre creature is a Nuppeppo - a rancid-smelling blob of flesh. I wasn't sure how to classify him, but for now he's the familiar of ...

... this lovely lady - the Jorogumo. She's a seductive spider-woman. With a lute. Or whatever the Japanese equivalent is. In basic Battlesworn she'd be a Warmage or Sorceror, and the Nuppeppo wouldn't get a look-in. But in the new supplement is the Witch class, which fits her perfectly and requires the figure to have a familiar. The Witch class is available as a free dowload from Ganesha Games' site, by the way.

Did I say she was a spider-woman?

As you can see, the figures are a bit rough around the edges. In terms of quality they are on a par with metal miniatures from, say, the 1970s. You can see the printer's layering effect on some of the pictures if you look closely, but at gaming distances it's not noticeable. The split figures fitted together reasonable well, but some Milliput was required to fill in gaps in the join. The plastic took paint very easily - one undercoat as I was away. So they make an interesting, and unusual warband and, since I have the printer and plastic, were cheap to make.

Monday, 28 March 2016

Things We Have In Australia That The Rest Of The World Doesn't Have #73 - The only surviving German WW1 A7V tank in existence.

Meet Mephisto. It is, as I said above, the only surviving WW1 German A7V tank in existence. Normally it lived in Brisbane (which, being in Queensland, is pretty much a foreign country) but at the moment it's making a guest appearance at the National War Memorial in Canberra. I've been trying to organise a trip down to see it for weeks, and today I finally managed it.

You can read the story of Mephisto HERE, but for those reluctant to click on links, it was basically captured at Villers-Bretonneux on 24 April 1918, and eventually brought to Australia as a war-trophy because, basically, Australians will nick anything that's not nailed down.

Enough.

The link above has all of the text you need to read about this piece of tank history. Here are pictures. Lots of pictures:

How big is an A7V? The lovely Rachel, looking a bit grumpy, it has to be said, shows you. She is, as you will recall, 5' 8" tall.

You can tell that I found Mephisto ... riveting!

There is other stuff at the War Memorial. A lot of other stuff. I didn't take pictures of most of it. But here's Lancaster Bomber 'G for George'

Sunday, 27 March 2016

We got together with our friends yesterday evening, and managed another full six-player game of History of the World. You'll be pleased to know that I didn't record it in detail.

Here's the end of the Second Epoch, with eventual winner Claudia (Red) having just completed the Persian move. She opted to go east, ignoring the Fortress Mesopotamia created by Marco with the Babylonians (which actually survived the whole game) and pushing into India and the far west of China. She lost a lot of troops attacking India, however, which limited her expansion.

The end of Fifth Epoch, with the Mongols (Brown - Me) having had a relatively successful turn. I didn't take the whole of China, but I did manage to get a solid foothold in Western Europe and improve my position in Southern Europe.

The nations I played. I didn't set the world on fire as Macedonia, but played a long game with what I did get, fortifying it and holding it until the end of the game Spain gave me a good boost near the end, and I did the best I could with Germany, but a couple of unlucky combats saw me fail to carve out the far-eastern colonial enclaves I was hoping for.

As I said above, Claudia won the the game, closely followed by Marco, who would have probably clinched a victory had he not been dealt the USA on the last turn, which somewhat limited his point-scoring. I came third. Maya managed to pick up the Inca/Aztec Empire, and also had ... the Maya. So she dominated the Americas with a vast, unified, empire for a couple of turns. Sadly she also draw a load of horse-nomads, which are fun for aggressive play, but less useful for empire-building. This cost her the big points. Catherine and John played a solid game, scoring well with Russia on the last turn, whilst Eric languished at the bottom of the table for the whole game, seemingly unable to hold any amount of territory for more than a turn.

History of the World is a great game but does take a while to play, especially if you don't play it regularly and have to relearn some of the nuances as you go along. Although the combat kind of involves the other players. there is a certain amount of payer down-time between turns, which a couple of our group found frustrating.

Maya also treated us to a round of Avalon, which is an Arthurian themed guessing/logic game in the style of Werewolf. We quite enjoyed it, but none of us were entirely sure how we were really supposed to achieve our goals, so it was all a bit random. We didn't have time for a second run-through.

Saturday, 26 March 2016

Thursday night saw another session with three lively games on the go. I played 15mm HOTT with Geoff. I the first game I took Orcs against Dwarves (the kind with various team-devices - those Dwarves)

I attacked on both flanks - on one with Beasts and on the other with Riders, and saw both attacks shot down by Artillery and Shooters. Unable to make a breakthrough there I just launched an assault in the centre.

I lost 17AP. Geoff lost noting. It was a massacre. Songs will be sung in Dwarven halls for ever more.

Here are the pitiful remains of my army. On the plus side I didn't lose my general.

We then tried Daleks against UNIT. I advanced my Dalek line and Geoff's shooting was, once again, rather good. He even took out my Artillery with shooting.

I managed to get the Brigadier into a sticky situation. I then completely fluffed the combat, losing my general and the battle.

On one of the other table was a Flames of War game set in Italy. Impressive scenery, as ever, plus loads of burning tanks.

Caesar and Gary played Saga, and were obviously having a whale of a time, pitting Vikings against Jomsvikings. This is their second game, which saw them battling for control of a couple of bridges. The bridges threw out the colour-balance, which is why the pictures look dark and peculiar.

The Stronghold Rebuilt

Officially a blog about 'Hordes Of The Things', the excellent fast-play fantasy miniatures rules from WRG. But expect minor, and not so minor diversions into other games as well, as my grasshopper-like mind leaps from one cool thing to another.

Allegedly worse than Hitler and more bigoted than The Miniatures Page. Actually not.